Time for Slater to kiss his Baggy Blue goodbye

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Michael Slater, the opening batsman who was an integral part of one of cricket's greatest sides before a career nosedive, will announce his retirement from all cricket today.

Slater, the livewire right-hander who thrilled fans and teammates with his footwork, his attacking nature and with his emotion, is expected to pursue a career in the media after confirming the end of his career at Cricket NSW headquarters.

The 34-year-old, one of many sporting success stories from the southern NSW town of Wagga Wagga, had been considering playing for the Blues next season in a bid to atone for a disappointing 2003-04, in which he was restricted to just three Pura Cup matches after contracting ankylosing spondylitis, a rare, arthritis-like condition that attacks the spine.

However, Slater was understood to have been disappointed with NSW's offer for next summer, a reduced salary based on the expectation he would not be chosen for the state's one-day side again. This, combined with some ongoing fitness struggles, has led to his decision to quit.

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Slater, who played in all 16 matches of Australia's Test-record winning streak from 1999 to 2001, has already launched a career as a television pundit in England and Australia, and can be expected to follow his former long-term opening partner, captain and fellow Wagga Wagga product Mark Taylor to the commentary box.

Through 78 partnerships, Slater and Taylor became Test cricket's second-most successful opening pairing, and Australia's most prolific, scoring 3887 runs at an average of 51 runs per stand, second only to the mammoth 6482 runs scored between West Indians Gordon Greenidge and Desmond Haynes.

Slater played 74 Tests starting from the first match of the 1993 Ashes until he was dropped after the fourth Test of the corresponding series in 2001. He scored 5312 Test runs - 12th-highest among Australians - at a robust 42.84, including 14 hundreds and 21 half-centuries, and with a top score of 219 in the first Test against Sri Lanka in Perth in 1995-96.

Slater earned praise from cricket lovers everywhere for an aggressive attitude which helped define Australia's return to world dominance in the 1990s. He can be credited also with inventing the kiss-the-cap celebration when he made his maiden Test century, 152, in his third Test innings on the 1993 Ashes Tour, at the perfect venue of Lord's.

The rapid starts he helped give many an Australian innings set a standard still being followed today.

Anyone who saw it will remember the audacious four slashed to the third man fence off the first ball of the 1994-95 Ashes series, off an incredulous Phil DeFreitas, with which Slater began a memorable 176, his second-highest Test score. Australia made 4-329 that day in Brisbane then won the Test and series.

Yet his decline will also stick in the memory. Amid some well-documented personal problems that led to his divorce, Slater went through a public downward spiral in 2001. This was perhaps best illustrated by his outburst towards Rahul Dravid during the Mumbai match of that year's tour of India, after Slater had an appeal for a catch turned down. The match was the last in Australia's record winning streak, and a watershed in Slater's downturn.

The ferocity of his outburst was felt to have been symptomatic of deeper personal problems, which continued to plague Slater on the Ashes tour. After the first four Tests of that series, through which he averaged only 24, Slater was dropped.

Slater, whose red Ferrari was seen by many as a symbol of his distracting love for the fast life, remained in the wars in the subsequent summer when he was axed by NSW, his torment showing during a club match when he angrily threw his helmet at a photographer upon retiring hurt after being hit by a bouncer.

Months later, Slater said being dropped was the wake-up call he needed. "It takes a while for certain things to sink in or for you to sometimes change your mental approach," he said.

Slater recovered to become a key factor in NSW's charge to the Pura Cup title in 2002-03, scoring his last first class century - a neat 100 - to help the Blues win the final in Brisbane.